It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.
We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazelās Enviro Trust, about the things that can go wrong on your holiday and how they can quite possibly be the best bits. Larry said, theyāre the ones you tell stories about for years after. I said that chimed with something Iād just been reading; that the preoccupation of our age is the state of happiness. The argument being that weāre actually fuelled and fulfilled by other things, such as adversity and the meeting of it.
So anyway, whatās better, after a long flight and hauling your bags to your room, than to get in the pool?
Down we rode to the swimming pool, into the changing room I went, into my togs I climbed, and off to the pool I walked, carefully, because the decking looked a bit slippery, and just about there, when Jesus FC even with stepping carefully itās not enough to stay upright on the Kwila and oh no, there go my feet out from under me, and Iām coming down fast, backwards, and out go my hands behind me to break my fall and save the back of my head, and mission accomplished as I thud backwards onto the deck and Jesus FC am I pissed off, and also a bit rattled by a dice with disaster.
The Brits in the pool just go on chatting, possibly observing the bloke code that you pretend not to notice another bloke make a clown of himself, or possibly because these days I have grey-haired invisibility.
Anyway, into the water I go and wait for Karren, to warn her. She manages to not banana peel herself.
An hour later Iām rubbing my wrist and thinking this better stop hurting and later that night the pain keeps waking me and I test the hand, and itās almost too stiff to move at all, and Iām thinking it would not be at all good to have a buggered wrist for a 4,500k bike ride with my old mate Dick, the mate I was supposed to go with on a world tour in 1983 but instead left in the lurch when they offered me the chance to be a breweries executive.
I was figuring it would most likely just be a sprain, this not being my first banana peel. Dr Google said keep it elevated. So thatās what I did from time to time yesterday as we walked here there and everywhere, holding my arm against my chest, hand against my shoulder as if swaddled there by invisible folded cloth. My Singapore Sling, if you will.
Patient seemed not unduly troubled by injury, to extent of making lame Dad jokes.
Hello reader Richard, who may at this point be reading with alarm. Iām writing this on my iPhone with a right hand from which all the pain and stiffness has now gone. Just a little sprain. Weāre still riding the EuroVelo 6.
Adversity forever lies in wait on your holidays. Sometimes it can entertain other holidaymakers. We got a solid ten minutes entertainment out of this stranded tourist bus in Little India.
Some damn driver had just parked his truck where he pleased and thereby squeezed the carriageway to the width of a tourist bus minus two wing mirrors. Try as she might, the poor driver couldnāt get through. At first, she politely tooted her horn, but by minute ten she was just goddam sitting on it.
A crowd gathering takes no time at all in crowded Little India.
People started speculating about the whereabouts of the Asshole-in-Chief. I wondered if he might be visiting a friend. Even on the quickest of assignations, you canāt hurry love.
Meanwhile, the driver of the lawfully parked truck on the other side eventually appeared and began to try to move his one further over, with the noisy instructions of 100 onlookers.
And then surprise! The man of the moment materialises beside his truck and goes to open his driver door, and various people step in to make him aware of the inconvenience he has caused.
Does he pause to hear them read the riot act ? Does he fuck. How many of us would?
Does he climb into the cab and hotfoot it away? No, he does not do this either.
Various expressions in various languages of dude wtf shower him as he shuts the driver cab, comes back around to the footpath and disappears back into the shop. A few moments later he returns with a suitcase which he heaves into the passenger side and now finally makes for the driver cab, gets in, and hotfoots it away with denunciations and waving arms trailing him.
The bus finally makes its way through, and I capture footage of the holidaymakers, whose experience of adversity does not seem to have troubled them one bit. Needless to say, the footage of them waving and smiling and laughing is not held for posterity because I failed, as I often do, to press the big red button.
On we go, collecting stories and just trying to stay upright.
Previously
David Slack
David Slack
